Bird By Bird

Amen to that brother. I know that I am not normal because my old friends have told me so (sometimes politely, sometimes not), my sense of humour is darker than what is found by most to be acceptable and my values are different than most people. One value I believe is that the purpose of life is to fulfill your individual dharma. Dharma = Destiny + Desire Destiny = What God wants you to do. Desire = What you want to do. God can give us hints to what our Destiny is through prayer, meditation, significant dreams(they feel more important than regular dreams), and many other events. You've spoken about many desires like raising a family, travelling and working as a farm hand. As a man with a long ancestry of nomads, I consider travelling with family to be the historical norm while settling in a single location is an aberation. I'm sure you've met some husband-wife trucker couples on the road and maybe retirees or winterbirds in their RVs. How can these desires can be combined with your destiny? What order should you fulfill them in? Are there any desires you don't care about anymore? The answers will show up eventually. I like to go deep with people too but sometimes that is inappropriate. It depends on the situation.

From what I understand, you still drum but only casually. Is that right? I've also lowered "things I could be good at but are not the priority" to the hobby list, as opposed to the business/career list.

I love your enthusiasm about Game Quitters and your new plan. Just make sure you got a backup plan waiting in the wings just in case life decides to be an asshole. You mentioned a team. Is that your old MOBA team or like your company's team? I never had anyone angry at me for quitting a game before - but then again, my weakness was single player soulslikes.

Oct Week 3 Analysis I wrote parts of my main novel for a total of 1 day this week. I jogged 3 times (every second day). I put the computer away at 12am for 2 days in a row this week. I have begun brushing my hair once a day as part of my morning routine. New ideas for writing appear around 4, 5, and 6 am. This happens regardless of me being an early bird or me pulling an all nighter. After daydreaming about greek and mediteranian salads and platters, I have begun eating more fruits and veggies with hummus and dips for breakfast and less bread or grain-based products. Predictions: I will rage at Linux. I will not put my computer away until way after 12am on most days. I will get more sleep this week. I will jog 4 times this week. I will alternate between a calm reasonable pace and a frantic rushed state. I will spend more days writing my novel for this week than last week. I will spend more time reading during this week than last week.

I noticed my computer was at a slight angle. Used a level and it turned out the left side of my screen was slightly higher than the right side of my screen. Used some flipbooks to level it out.

What you feel now is the normal level of stimulation that everyone has felt for thousands of years of human history as we have lived our lives on this Earth. Things might seem boring or painful because the feel-good rewards of constant gaming are no longer there. A subtle motivation, a cold fire that blends into the background of things is what drives most great works - that's what I'd like to think. I'm experimenting to see if this is true. They didn't. Passive distractions are unique to our era. Before, all distractions involved activity whether that be getting off your ass and walking to the theater or the bar or picking up a book and manually moving your eyes across the words and manually creating a moving picture in your mind's eye using the descriptions in the text. Nobody had cellphones. There were long carriage rides with nothing to do but look out the window.

Wed 14 Day 32 + 30 Jogged. Worked on Blog. Contemplated putting laptop and phone in piano bench after eating dinner because I no longer want to web surf binge at night. I miss looking in the mirror and seeing the whites of my eyes - all I see are the reds of my eyes. Thu 15 Productive and content work turned irritating at the 2 hour mark, angry at the 3 hour mark, sad after 4 hours and tired after 5. I blame screen addiction. Laptop doesn't fit inside piano bench. Put it ontop of piano before going upstairs to bed. (Day 1 put computer away at 12am) Fri 16 Woke at 9 am. Finally. Brewed tea. Jogged. Failed to connect PuTTY to VPS. I am more chill this time. (Day 2 put computer away at 12am) Sat 17 Vomited at 4 am. Installed Debian on VPS. Can't help but feel I fucked something up but it seems to work fine for now. Linux framework has me in perpetual confusion. My eyes look less red. Read that people self-isolate for fear of being called out for not doing shit. Web surf binged at night. Sun 18 Day 36 + 30 Made income and expenses shreadsheet. Web surf binged at night. Mon 19 I want to rush and get things done but also move slow at my own pace and do both at the same time. WTF! Debian giving me "Network is unreachable" messages. I've been getting "Network is unreachable" messages for my entire life. There are 50 different solutions that could fix this problem. I am going through every one of them until I find the one that works. I am becoming methodical. Resolve: to go through each possible fix one by one to write down what I changed plus screenshots and links to cross them off a list until I find the one that works

It really does depend on the individual person. My uncle games like 2 hours once a week and he's fine with sticking to his work and social commitments. I also think it's because he was exposed to games at a later age than I and because of that, his brain was more mature and developped more self control - unlike today where babies are given iPads before their first birthday to calm them down. Bird by Bird is a how-to-write book about doing work one step at a time. I haven't drank coffee in months. I'm still jittery as a result of other things like, gaming and web surfing,but much less than before. I do brew a good pot of tea every so often but it's not a habit. I can't wait for this nervous wreck trend to end and for people to become calm again.

I remember living within walking distance of a big river. Soothing. Healthy.

Oct 2020 week 2 analysis Trend: Long melodramatic posts on weekends. Trend: Too much on to-do list for 2 weeks in a row. Trend: Waking up at from 12-2pm. If you (yeah, you reading this right now) see any other trends, tell me about them. We are all blind to ourselves. I also haven't been able to get my forum signature to work. It's just some text and a link to this journal. Everyone around me is a nervous wreck. I don't think I've ever even met a single calm person in the past ten years. Even the monks at that temple I went to are worried about shit, and the rich relatives and their friends I spoke to are also worried about shit. Did all the chill people just tunnel underground? I want a chill role model damn it.

Wed 7 Day 25+ 30 Looked up website builders. Read how author of Conan killed himself. Don't feel like reading Conan anymore. Thu 8 Read White by Ellis. He says [paraphrase] that artists will disapoint you and morality is bullshit so just focus on the aesthetics. I've returned to reading Conan again. Fri 9 Trend of waking at noon. Ameliorate by sunbathing more. Only use small lamp (not big room light) after 7pm. Draw blue circle on calendar on every day I jog. I remembered Memory Palace system and revisited it. Remembered limiting belief: cannot have friends if no job or school. Sat 10 Giant Wall To-Do List works great. I can move any tasks not completed this week to one of the following weeks. Easy, simple, stress-free. Re-arranged next week's schedule to prioritize Website with Toastmasters as secondary objective and everything else down below. Organized notes in 3D space: 1D: left + right, 2D: up + down, 3D: overlapping on top of each other. Website Builders suck. Decided to use Ghost Blog. Finished writing Toastmasters speech. Sun 11 Choose and bought Domain Name. Remembered how dad and mom seperated me from other children and gave me weird beliefs about girls. I look at what used to be the dining room: Hell is opened amazon boxes piled on top of each other, forever. There must be insect collonies living under those boxes. Social media is addictive and decreases productivity at work. Companies lose money because their workers are constantly checking social media. Students do worse in school because of social media. [We are here] Companies and parents lobby governments to put regulations on social media to curb addictive systems like notifications, recommended feeds, and infinite scrolling. Governments restrict social media. Employees and students become more productive. Companies make more money. Companies invest more money into lobbying for healthy social media restrictions. I deleted LinkedIn. I don't care if Dumbfuck from Bumfuck just got a promotion or RecruiterBot 5000 wants to add me and spam me. Social Media, fuck you. As I read other journals, it feels like many of us see our lives as a Melodrama. I want God to switch the genre of my life to Slice-of-Life. A genre that is calm and drama-free. Mon 12 Day 30+30 Tinkered with Ghost blog. Tue 13 2am Do I eat dinner slowly and web surf at night to avoid writing in the morning? Is this my Play-Self's rebellion against my Work-Self?

Weekly Review Wrote 3 times for main story last week: Oct 1, 2, and 3. Did not write Sunday or Monday. Wrote Tuesday morning after binge reading Story Structure Architect all night. Melodrama hightens during the weekends and Monday. Oct Week 2 To-Do Setup writing website Edit 3 of my short stories Finish Chapter 1 draft of novel delegate other tasks to next week

SEP 2020 WEEK 5 / OCT 2020 WEEK 1 BINGE JOURNAL Tue 29 Day 17 + 30 Did Toastmasters Speech. Beginning good, middle dragged, fumbled end. Overall good. Wed 30 Unpacked giant box of my things that was blocking hallway for 5 months. Cleaned room. Noticed negative trend: websurf from 12-2am. Dad and Mom do this too. I have been sleeping until 10AM to avoid morning writing. Oct Thu 1 Fridge at 100% capacity. Toilet paper mountain has fallen down. Mom refuses to admit shopping addiction. Covid hoarding. Catalgoued health problems. Hypothesis that most of them are caused by too much sugar. I am experimenting with less bread, more corn and crackers. Let's see what happens. Replaced by plastic mouthwash cup with a metal cup. Setup wall calendar for Seinfeld's Big Red X-chain method. Every time I write my main story, I add an X to the calendar. I begin my streak today, Oct 1. Fri 2 What we do with gamequitters journals is biographical work necessary to escape the trajectory of addiction. To quit games is one step closer to a total commitment to the real world. The real world is much harder than the addict world - much harder than the game world. -paraphrasing Maturing Out of Addiction by Engel Prins Began reading Conan the Barbarian. Gives me shivers. Sat 3 Failed to finish Chapter 1 draft by end of week. Wrote other pieces of disjointed fiction instead. I lacked discipline and skill to organize my disjointed prose into a scene. My median concentration is 2 hours, after which, I am distracted or take a break. When you focus on a task with no distractions, you are intensely confronted by your own lack of skill - my own lack of skill. While I do acknowledge the skill I have, long have I been blind to the skills I could have, and have yet to learn.The learning process is an uncomfortable embracement. Began reading Make a Scene by Rosenfeld. Downloaded and listened to Lovecraft audiobook recordings from librivox.org. Sun 4 Games made us weak. Losing IRL leaves a permanent mark and it is that possibility of losing that we want to avoid. No reset button, no new save file. All my life I have avoided any activity that I cannot reset. I contemplate memorizing my 500 word summaries of useful books I've read. Socrates says books decrease memory while oral recitation increases and maintains it. No point in reading if I just forget it all. I practice orally reciting passages from books I've read to the best of my ability, from time to time. Appalling how little I remember. After long unproductive hours, I closed my laptop and meditated. I suffer from web surfing withdrawals. I aim to make monday my weekly meditation day. Mon 5 Blocked Reddit from my computer using leechblock, forever. Opposite of addiction is [social] connection. - Jo Hari. Porn severed some connection I had with girls. Some time earlier, I removed the SIM from my phone. Don't want people interrupting my writing time and Do Not Disturb mode is unreliable. I'll check my messages every Tuesday. Began wearing a smartwatch that looks analog. A symbol to focus me during deep dives. My meditation is plagued by compulses to masturbate, to sleep, to use the computer and to write. I notice things on my body. The itchyness of the underside of my middle finger, the dryness of my hair, the inbetween my toes - wet with sweat. My body is contorting me in weird positions. This must be how Yoga was invented. Looked up Old Timey Radio programs on archive.org They might help me with Toastmasters and Podcasting. Tue 6 Day 24 + 30 Brave web browser no long worked. After 10 hours of cursing, I downloaded Brave Beta and transfered all my bookmarks from regular Brave. Beta works. I think trying to download a fuckton of Old Timey Radio might have cursed regular Brave to death, even when I deleted and re-downloaded it. Brainstormed a Slice of Life serial about an ex-gaming addict, living without games.

My tone might have been harsh but I mean well and I do wish for you, and all of us, to overcome our addictions and live our best lives.

I'm glad that you've been able to take a look at yourself and see the truth of your gaming addiction. You have to do what you can now to save your money before you lose it all. In another thread you asked: Do you consider any gaming at all a relapse? Considering you took money from you and your fiance's savings account to play mobile games, the answer for you is yes it would be a relaspe. For MMO or AAA game addicts, our hooks are PC or console games and might be able to play 5min of tetris without caving in to hour-long binges, but even that might trigger a relapse. Gacha games are also pointless and devoid of any value beyond feeling-high in the moment. Moderate gaming is no longer a posibility for you because by taking money from a joint account to fund your addiction, you have gotten this close to stealing from your fiance. If not theft, then at least the betrayal of trust. I think you should give your smartphone to someone you trust (or throw it away) and get a cheap flip phone instead. Then when the cravings hit, the possibility of addiction won't be there. Gaming Addiction also sounds like a bad side-effect of whatever relationships problems that are going on so you might need help with that too. I don't know that I'm a full on addict Yes, you are a gaming addict. but with commitment, you can become a recovering gaming addict. Games are considered Behavioural Addictions https://icd.who.int/browse11/l-m/en#/http://id.who.int/icd/entity/1448597234 as opposed to drugs that are considered chemical addictions. Games are programmed to mimic the addictive compulsions of drugs in order to get your money. I wanted to answer you here instead of the Relapse thread to speak to your situation specifically. This might sound harsh to you but I write with the best of intentions. Give your smartphone to your fiance or whoever else you trust.

From my understanding, worlds ends oct 31. This means LoL ends for you on Halloween and you begin a new life Nov 1st on All Saint's Day. Poetic.

We also have a bunch of other stuff like earth, the drive of nature, and metal, the drive to progress through technology. Also, inviting the negative emotions is a good first step but they will never tell you what they really mean since they're in your house. Eventually, you'll have to go down and visit them in their country. Then, in the midst of their customs, will you be able to reach an understanding, or more arguments, depending on whichever turns out to be better.

Your environment is tough. I did so much better when I was on my own than with my family. If only I didn't have game addiction back then, oh well. Eventually, things will change and your environment will get better either by miracle or by you moving. Psychology can be so stupid when they try to treat individuals and ignore the social problem.

I think it depends on how high code games are on the "how addictive is this for you scale" if the answer is low or near the bottom then I think it's fine. Coding games might cause a relapse into other games if the cravings get stronger in the middle months, but is really depends on the person. A.I. Dungeon is low on the addictive scale for me and I use it once every two months or so to engage in conversation with simulated historical figures or ask the AI for advice.

Sounds tough. Everywhere are the addictions and the people compelled to spend money to follow those addictions. Just remember that when your enegy reaches zero - then you become sick and then it gets really expensive. That's what happened to my grandfather and he died. Cutting back on expenses may offend the people around you, but that's just something a man has got to do. You can also ask for help. From who? I'm not sure but there's got to be someone near who can help you lighten the load. There usually is.

I'm glad that you told your buddies that would not tolerate such behaviour. People will disrespect any person, culture or religion unless they assert themselves. It's important to tell other people about our boundaries, and then act to defend those boundaries when infringed upon. Even if it is hard sometimes.

Youtube kept recommending me game videos for more than two weeks, even after I stopped. The UnDistracted chorme extension removed the recommendations and turned youtube into just a search bar. This might help you.

I'm also interesting in camping and RV living but it became an intellectualization/procrastination research-binge with no end-state or final product in mind until - I booked a campground for a specific date and time and committed to going. While buying and converting a van is too time consuming to test - You can easily experiment with boondocking. I think if you set a precise date and place for when you are going to do the deed and commit to it, then your research becomes superfocused. Then, you can decide after that experience if you really like it or not. Marking a date on the calendar is the benchmark and differentiates between something real or just mental masturbation.

My current relaxation activities, are podcasts and reading (good) and web surfing (bad). You have made me think about what other relaxation acitivities I can do.

Day 12-14 seems like many big changes have happened. I hope your professors know that you have suddenly been called to work full time. It is important to milk as much compassion from them as you can because then they know how your new hard job is affecting you. I hope they don't have the impression that you suddenly turned into a lazy student. Unlike the others, you have a good excuse.